What is a Man-in-the-middle Attack | Types and Prevention

Suppose you want to know about the prevalent type of cybersecurity attack, then the first name comes in mind in man-in-the-middle attacks. When you are reading this article, we are pretty much sure that you might have heard its name but you does not have complete idea about it.

MiTM is one type of attack that takes place within two legitimate communicating hosts which allow a hacker “listen to” the conversation, and they will have  access to listen; that is the reason they are called “man-in-the-middle”.

Man-in-the-Middle Attack

• Users will get a kind of session hijacking.
• This involves attacker to insert themselves as the proxies going on with the legitimate data transfer or conversation.
• It exploits the real-time nature so that transferred data will not get deleted.
• It allows the attacker to intercept confidential data.
• Through this attacker can insert the malicious data, and it gets links indistinguishable way from the legitimate data. 

Man-in-the-middle Attack Types

There are five types of attacks, those are discussing below

1. Email Hijacking- Attacker has access to the user’s email account and will watch the transaction from that particular account. For example, users exchange funds with the other party and attacker will take advantage of that situation by intercepting the fund by spoofing.
2. Wi-Fi Eavesdropping- This is a very passive way to deploy the MITM attack, which involves hackers setting the public Wi-Fi connection with an unsuspecting name so that they gain access to the victim’s device as soon as they get connected with it some other malicious Wi-Fi.
3. Session Hijacking- In this, hack gains access for an online session through the stolen session key or few browser cookies.
4. DNS Spoofing- The attacker gets to engage with the DNS spoofing by changing the website’s address record within their domain name. The victim will unknowingly visit some fake site where the attacker will try to steal their information.
5. IP Spoofing- This is similar to DNS spoofing where the attacker attempts to divert the traffic to other fraudulent websites with other malicious intent. Instead of spoofing, the attacker disguises the internet protocol address.

How to Prevent Man-in-the-Middle Attacks?

Down you will get few ways to prevent this type of attack; those are discussing below

1. Implement a comprehensive Email Security Solution- This is an email security solution that is vital for any organisation’s security. It also helps to minimize the risk solution which is associated with the MITM. It also secures all the emails actively when staff focuses the effort elsewhere.
2. Web Security Solution- This attack can become challenging for an attacker if you make a strong web security tool, which provides visibility so that it can generate traffic for both the end-user and system in the same protocol and port layers. Similarly, an email security tool implements the protection for your organization’s web traffic to cover the security team.
3. Educate Employees- You need to provide the relevant training for all employees to identify before the attack happens because they will know its dynamics, samples, pattern, and frequency of attack method. You can even give them some case studies that can be all together education material to work as an awareness program.
4. Keep credentials secure- As a business owner, you always need to check user credentials very often. You need to make sure that all the passwords are safe, complex, and updated everywhere. You need to keep on updating a minimum of every three months. This will help you keep your company protected and keep your credential fresh so that it becomes more challenging to crack.

Future of MITM Attacks

MITM is a very useful tool for the attacker where the attacker can continue to intercept important data, including password and credit card number. It makes the race between the network provider and software developer close the vulnerability attack so that the attacker can exploit and execute the MITM.

You can take a massive proliferation where loT device can maintain the security standards, and it has the same capability like other devices; this will make things more vulnerable like MITM attack. Attackers need to use the organisation’s network to move a few other techniques where they get the new fancy internet-capable thermostat that works as a security hole.

MITM will make the wireless network adoption which includes 5G network. Attackers use the opportunity to steal the data by using MITM to infiltrate the organisation. Few incumbent wireless companies which fix the vulnerability to provide the secure backbone for the device and users.

In this technology era, there are many devices which is connected with the different type of  network, this directly states that attacker will have more opportunity to use MITM technique.

FINAL THOUGHT

Finally, we have completed giving the brief about MITM, and we can hope that this concept will help for you to make the correct future decision.